A feeling of sadness overwhelmed Isa and his willful pride softened. “We were a party with the very loftiest ideals,” he said, responding to a sudden desire to make a confession, “a party of self-sacrifice and absolute integrity. In the face of all kinds of temptations and threats, we were the party which said, ‘No, and no again.’ We were like that before 1936. So how did our pure spirit get so senile? How did we sink little by little till we had lost all the good qualities we had? Now here we are turning up our hands in despair in the darkness, feeling sad and guilt-stricken. It’s too bad.”

“We were the best of them all,” the Shaikh said insistently, “right up till the very last moment.”

“That’s a relative judgment,” Isa replied in a bitter tone which was really aimed at himself. “It doesn’t fit in with the nature of things, nor does it satisfy the people who are tackling life so enthusiastically. Too bad, then…”

Isa said good night to him at the end of the street. He watched him as he walked slowly away with the wind blowing in his loose-fitting gallabiyya. The Shaikh had started his life, Isa thought sadly, by being imprisoned in Tanta when the Australian soldiers had arrested him as he was shouting. “Long live the homeland…long live Saad.” He had ended up in 1942 trading in vacant jobs, just as I finished up with bank account number 33123 at the Bank of Egypt.

He looked up at the universe. The rising moon was shining brightly, and the stars were gleaming, infinity overwhelming everything else. “What does it all mean?” he asked himself in an audible voice. “Tell me; my guide’s all confused.”

The doorbell rang loudly in the nocturnal silence when he pressed it. He waited for a while, then rang it again. He waited, and then rang again. He kept on pressing the bell, but there was no answer. She must have decided not to open the door! he thought. He stamped on the ground, then turned around and walked away.

TWENTY-SEVEN

He spent the night at Ibrahim Khairat’s house. The next day he took a room in the Grand Hotel on the Nile. After a week he had to draw another hundred pounds to cover his never-ending losses and his daily expenses. Ibrahim’s wife went to see Qadriyya at her husband’s suggestion to apologize for the unintentional role which Ibrahim had played in her quarrel with her husband. Then she tried to bring about a reconciliation, but got no response. Isa kept on gambling without the slightest consideration of the consequences. Samir stopped coming to their evening sessions because he was so disgusted by the dissipation he could see in his friend. “You should really take a look at your entire situation,” he told Isa one day.